Energy, Part II: Pocket Full of Feelings

(written February 11-17, 2020)

Something that I didn't mention much in my first installment of this series is how deeply I actually feel emotions most of the time now. I don't know if I can explain it more than that, and it's only some emotions, but it's very much more pronounced than it ever was before.

For example, as a compare and contrast -- when I found out about my former coworker's death last week, I wasn't incredibly upset. I wasn't anything more than mildly surprised, really. The void comes for us all, and all of that...and sometimes it comes for us in grisly, nasty ways. That's life, that's death, it happens.

Yet, upon watching Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, which I preordered the Blu-ray of, I cried at least three times. Ugly crying, too, with snot and blurred vision and the need to pause the movie. And I was crying at scenes that weren't supposed to be tug-at-your-heartstrings sad or depressing, yet there I was.

I cried at those scenes too, mind you, but you get my point.

I cried twice when Daisy and I went to see Little Women in the theater last weekend, and was so moved by it that I immediately bought the book off Amazon and began reading it.

Sometimes I cry in frustration. I used to cry in anger, a lot, but for some reason that switch turned off and now I just get very quiet (or, at times, very loud).

I am full of wishes. I am full of things I would like to do, successes I'd like to achieve, places I'd like to go, material things I'd like to own.

I want a Tesla. Have any of you ever been to a Tesla dealership to look at the showroom cars? They look magical. They look like the future. Hell, the Model X (the SUV) has gullwing back doors like a DeLorean. 

I want a DeLorean too, but I'll never have one of those either. Plus, I hate driving stick shift, and most of the surviving ones are stick.

I mean, I can do it, but I haven't done it in literally twenty years and was never a fan of it when I did do it -- Driver's Ed in high school, by the way. The car was a 1986 baby-shit-brown Cavalier. Not sure I'd even really remember how now, as it was so long ago.

As the weather is slowly getting better in the slow march towards Spring, I've been itching to get behind the wheel of a vehicle again, something I can call mine. Daisy's car is fine, and it's reliable, but I really don't like driving it that much and I am somewhat paranoid when I do -- if I get into an accident, we would then have zero vehicles. When I had the Monte Carlo I would drive it anywhere, anytime, in any weather. Not only did I have to, but I was incredibly comfortable doing so as I knew that car was like an extension of myself. I like Daisy's car, but it's not the same -- and it's not mine.

But, we don't have the money. Our jobs pay the bills and the mortgage and get us food and necessities, and there's not a lot left afterward for a lot of extras. Occasionally the wife or I will get some new clothing, or I'll use some of my (little) disposable income to replace an old or dying vape mod or subscribe to a few more comic books to add to my reading list -- but there's not enough extra, so to speak, to afford a car payment every month.

I have been following the Democratic primaries closely, because I believe that the only way that a lot of things in our lives will get better is if we get our current president the fuck out of office (and possibly into a prison cell, whatever works). Anyone who knows me well knows already that I am and have been a Bernie Sanders supporter for many years, and it looks like this time around he might actually have a shot at the nomination. Nebraska's primary happens late in the season, on May 12 (just two months before the DNC picks the nominee in July).

The wife and I have had serious discussions about relocating to Canada if Trump is re-elected.

This is not a joke; Daisy has dual citizenship, which means it is much easier for us to emigrate to Canada (and for me to be able to get in there as a permanent resident, as her husband) if we have to. I-29 straight up into Manitoba, folks. Eight hours, 570 miles.

I have serious doubts my psyche could withstand another four years of Trump. What I've seen already sickens and depresses me (along with my job as the first cause, I'd say the Trump presidency is the secondary-and-almost-as-major cause of my depression). I never thought I'd live in a country run this badly, where the rule of law no longer really exists, where it feels more and more every day like we're sinking into a dictatorship.

And to think, I used to think George W. Bush was the worst president we could've ever had. Boy, was I wrong. I almost feel as if I should write the man a letter of apology for all the nasty shit I said about him in the early 2000s. I was young and naive, and didn't think things would ever get this bad.

But that's just it -- I feel deeply, and when I am saddened or disgusted or ashamed, I feel those things deeply as well, and begin to spiral downward into those feelings.

I talked about a little of this at my doctor's visit this week.

No, not a therapist, though that may still eventually be in the cards -- my actual doctor. Daisy and I had our routine checkups/physicals this week (another reason why I took Wednesday off -- I needed a bit of time to prepare emotionally for that as well).

Let me expand on this a bit -- the wife and I do yearly physical checkups once a year with our doctor. We book them together and we go through them together, the doc sees both of us in the same room at the same time, and we just, well, knock 'em out, so to speak. Both of us have several relatively minor health issues that require these visits, but we do them to make sure nothing major is going wrong -- if that makes any sense.

"Are you still doing your testosterone therapy?" our doctor asked me.

"I am," I replied.

"And how are you feeling?"

"I mean, mostly okay, I guess."

"Mood swings, depression, shifts in demeanor?"

"Yes," I answered truthfully. "A lot, actually. I've been depressed quite a bit as of late, anxious, lack of any real energy or motivation, etc."

"But," I quickly added, "nothing debilitating or life threatening. Just very stressed and struggling. I think part of it is my job, and I think part of it is the actual hormones."

"It's probably all of that," she replied. "Do you ever feel hopeless, like each day is worse than the last, like it will never get better and you won't be able to face the next day?"

"No," I said. Which is, mostly, true. "It's not terrible, but it's not fun."

"Do you have sleep loss or insomnia -- or do you feel that you sleep too much? Lack of appetite, any sleep apnea symptoms/snoring? Any family history of sleep apnea?"

"No," I said. Again, mostly true. "Not that I know of, anyway. I do snore sometimes, [Daisy] has said that I do, but that's about it."

"He does not snore constantly," Daisy said. "Most of the time he sleeps very quietly."

"And it doesn't sound like he's stopping breathing or anything when he does snore?"

"No," Daisy replied.

"Yeah, then my guess is that most of it is caused by your job, buddy," the doctor said, with a slight smirk.

As an aside, as part of the exam, as soon as I mentioned the word "depression" I had to fill out a questionnaire -- consisting mostly of the questions my doctor asked me anyway. I did answer it truthfully. I'm not a threat of harm to myself or others, nor does it feel crushing (at least not on an emotional level, anyway) to get up out of bed every day and face the world. I do have sleeping and energy problems, and it feels like I can never get enough quality rest or have enough energy to do what I want or need to do (that's literally the point of this series of posts), but, I mean, I work overnights, I'm on testosterone replacement therapy, and I'm in my late thirties now. So it's a toss up.

"So, since we're talking about it anyway," the doctor continued, "let's discuss the testosterone treatment. I believe that your base levels when you started were something like 140?"

"That sounds accurate," I said.

As a visual aid, I'm going to provide this helpful chart that I found on Google:

So, as you can see, if this is accurate, when I began treatment I had the testosterone levels of an 80-year-old man. Or older. This explains a lot.

I was 34 when I began the treatment in 2017.

In the almost three years of treatment I have still never breached 200. After my first year they doubled my dose, which is what I'm currently on now and have been since early 2019 -- my blood work results will tell me (soon) where I'm at currently. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"And you said you're noticing some mood and emotional effects of the treatment? Yeah, that's fairly normal. We actually have you on a very low dose of the gels, considerably lower than what you'd be on if you were to go to one of those NuMale clinic places -- they shoot their patients up to like 900, 1000."

"What's the point of that?" I asked. 

She shrugged. "Well, let me tell you...it changes who you are, changes everything about you."

"So I'm just going to come out and say this," I said, "because it's a concern I've had for the past few months and I want to know if it's possible that it's happening or if I'm just imagining it, but...it feels and looks as if my penis and testicles are shrinking."

"Penis, no," the doctor said, unfazed. "Testicles, maybe. That can happen on testosterone therapy."

I briefly fought the urge to be like you haven't seen my dick, look at it, LOOK AT ITTTTT.

Obviously I decided against this course of action, but even in serious situations I still have a sense of humor, of course.

Some of you are probably wondering why I'm talking about this stuff so candidly here in my blog. Truthfully, I'm not ashamed of any of it -- it is what it is, and it's something I'll talk openly about with anyone who asks about it or asks for advice on whether they should seek said therapy. Life throws us curveballs sometimes, ahem, pardon the pun.

"Stay on the therapy," the doctor continued. "What it is doing is supplementing your body's natural testosterone, and supplanting it as necessary. Your body won't produce as much of it when you're on the therapy. If it comes to a time where you need to get off of it, we'd wean you off over a two month cycle -- just don't stop using the gel all at once or anything, because that will seriously mess up your hormones and mental state."

Great.

"So my other question is that if I did want to get off it, eventually, what would that entail?"

She repeated her statement about being weaned off of it slowly. I don't think she understood what was implied by that question, which was: if I want to get off of it, what will get my testosterone back to normal levels without me needing to be on it for the rest of my fucking life?

"That gel is a pain in the ass," I stated bluntly. "I guess I'd like to know what my options are if my blood results aren't that different this time around either."

"We'll see when it comes to that," the doctor replied.

As another short aside, in the car later I told the wife "and her answer had better not be something like 'rub in four packets of the gel every day instead of two' or I legit might scream. It is 2020, you can't legit tell me there's not a fucking pill I could take every day instead."

"I wouldn't want to take a pill every day," she replied.

Anyway. Back to the story.

"There is something else I wanted to pick your brain on," I said. "Every once in a while -- not all the time, not even most of the time, but once every, oh, 4-5 months or so...I will see blood in my urine or in my feces. Medically speaking, um, how 'normal' is this?"

This is true. There are times where I shit a not-insignificant amount of blood. It's not from coloring in food, and if it's from a hemorrhoid, it's not one I can feel -- but the toilet will be full of red. It'll happen for 2-4 bowel movements and then go away.  Same goes for my pee as well -- every once in a while my urine will be tinged with blood, making it look an orangey-red and that is goddamn troubling. That actually happened last week or the week before, making me paranoid that I had a UTI or something along those lines.

"It's fairly common," the doctor responded. "If it's a lot of blood, or it's dark red or brown looking then that could be a problem, but if it's bright red in your stool it's generally a hemorrhoid or something like that, and isn't a huge cause for concern. As for your urine it's probably not coming from the bladder or from the kidneys but from the sperm, blood in that isn't incredibly uncommon either."

None of this really eased my anxiety.

"If you think you could pee for me, though, we can do a urinalysis today just to check for any irregularities. You wanna do that?"

"Sure," I said.

So I went into the bathroom and peed in a cup, as if I were doing a drug screening. Thankfully I don't have anything to hide there.

The rest of the doctor's visit was relatively routine. I asked for an MMR booster, as I haven't had one since I was like, 12 -- and was told that they don't generally give them out unless the patient was in imminent danger of becoming infected....so I didn't get one of those. My request for a tetanus booster was granted, though, as I haven't had one of those since the mid-to-late 2000s. I got my flu shot back in December, so I didn't have to worry about that, and they (mostly) painlessly took a big vial of my blood for normal standard blood work.

I have perfect 120/80 blood pressure (lower than the wife's, actually). I believe last year I was 118/78 or something like that -- I haven't had higher blood pressures since I became vegetarian/mostly plant-based in my diet.

As for the rest of my blood test results, well, those remain to be seen. I believe (before seeing those results, of course) that I will be healthier than I was last year, as I have made a very strong effort to eat more cleanly and have still kept the weight off I kept off before, but we shall see.

On the way home, I mentioned to Daisy that I completely forgot to ask the doc about hypothyroidism.

"They check for that in the bloodwork anyhow," Daisy replied.

"I know, but I'd like them to do an in-depth screen for it and I completely forgot to ask."

I match up with the symptoms above:

- Poor memory and concentration/difficulty thinking/focusing/depression
- Low energy (of course)
- (occasional) muscle weakness
- Muscle and joint pain (nearly constantly)
- (occasional) swollen legs, ankles, or feet
- Poor hearing
- Slow pulse rate
- Coldness in extremities
- Fatigue
- Generally feeling cold
- (occasional) weight gain with poor appetite
- Definite hair loss
- (occasional) constipation
- very dry skin
- ...and, of course, the reproductive problems.

My hearing has always been bad -- it was tested and I had something like 20% hearing loss in my teens, attributed at the time to all of the ear infections I had as a child giving me some permanent loss, but maybe it's more than that.

My legs, ankles, and feet swell a lot.

I have a very low pulse rate a lot of the time -- I average around 75bpm but I've watched the monitor on my Apple Watch tell me I've had rates in the high 40s through low 60s pretty sustained for long chunks of time.

My fingers and toes are almost always cold. And if my body is cold it's really hard sometimes to warm up.

I am indeed losing my hair, almost by the handful, in the shower every day.

I have low energy, muscle fatigue/pain/joint pain almost constantly.

My skin is really dry, worse in winter, but still dry in the other seasons too -- no matter how much I hydrate myself.

Some of this can be attributed to getting old, some of it can be attributed to the testosterone therapy, and some of it can be attributed to stress and depression and the like...but not all of it. Not when I match up with so many of these symptoms.

I've been tested for hypothyroidism before, about ten years ago. At that time I was fine. But I don't know how in-depth any of the testing that's been done on me for it has been. And if anything in my blood work points toward any sort of abnormal thyroid reading, I will be going back for a super-in-depth test for it at my own request.

It also turns out that almost everything I eat is horrible for me if I have hypothyroidism:

- Coffee
- Broccoli and cauliflower
- Fried foods
- Bread and gluten
- Fiber from beans and other legumes
- Anything with soy
- Anything frozen/processed meals
- Butter, meat (well, I don't have to worry about that one) and alcohol (no worries here either)

Fuck me, man. The above is like 80% of my diet. What the fuck could I actually eat? Bananas, apples, and water? I already eat a ton of that and while it helps, it ain't satisfying.

Anyway, so that's what's going on right now. More to come eventually...when I have the energy.

Energy, Part I

(written late January through mid-February 2020)


Welcome to 2020, my friends, relatives, family, colleagues, and dear readers.

Still no flying cars. But then again, I covered that previously.

So far, 2020 is what it is. I'm mostly unfazed by it.

In the past several weeks, we've come to the brink of war a few times, there's a new pandemic (the coronavirus, if you haven't been paying attention), our impeached president had his impeachment overturned because apparently rule of law doesn't matter anymore, I'm still working in my soul-sucking job on the same overnight schedule, and I still only have one tattoo.

I've been in the creative spirit the past few weeks, but...I just haven't had the energy for much of it, sadly. My weekends fly by and disappear -- they seem like they take forever to arrive, and then once they're here they just vanish. This weekend in particular was gone in the blink of an eye with nothing to show for it; oh sure, a few bills got paid and we got some groceries and watched some Netflix, but everything else...just gone. I want to be able to have time and energy to write, to get out of the house here and there, to go to the gym and to be a little social at least without feeling sick and exhausted. And for the most part, that's exactly how I feel all the time -- sick and exhausted.

"What are your New Year's Resolutions?" Daisy asked me shortly after the new year.

"I don't really have any," I said.

A day or two later I would revise this to "I finally want to sit down and watch all the stuff I added to my list on Netflix."

Because, really, that's all I want -- downtime.

No, I have not gotten the flu or whatever it was Daisy and most of the family had over the holidays -- but I don't feel great because I can never get enough rest and always have something else to do to where I can't get any real peace. Since the beginning of the year, this has been wearing on me more and more, to the point where I am now almost constantly burnt out and tired and have low-level anxiety about everything. 

I told Daisy last week that for the time being, I'm giving up on the gym; it was not giving me any of the results I wanted, and it would just end up making me sore more than anything else, despite how frequently or infrequently I went. Our gym also replaced all of their machines with "new and improved" machines shortly before the Christmas season, and, well, I hate most of the new machines. They are not comfortable to use (some of them are downright uncomfortable or painful) and the machine I loved the most, one of their ab machines, they redesigned to where I cannot fit into it anymore with my wide shoulders/back.

When I went, I was not building any muscle or burning off any body fat -- I was just making myself more exhausted and pain-filled. After a while, I began to dread it, and began to dread the routine. After a few weeks of that, I started wanting to go less and less, because I knew the pain it would cause me for several days after. After that, I lost all will and energy to actually do it. I tried so hard for so many months and it just didn't do anything for me, and I made the decision that I couldn't keep sinking my valuable time and energy into something that left me in pain and unfulfilled -- I do that enough at my job; I refuse to do it in my off hours too.

Daisy, of course, was discouraged by this and still goes to the gym 3-4 times a week, generally after work before coming home. This means that she and I have less time together in the evenings before I have to go in to work myself.

I've started to withdraw into myself more and more over the winter months -- I don't adapt well to the cold, and the more time I spend around people, the less I like said people. My home office is my sanctuary, as I spend most of my waking (and a good chunk of my sleeping) hours there; I have my computer, access to my money, my phone, vape materials, TV/Roku, and my Switch there. I am depressed. I am frequently angry. And more than anything else, I am so, so tired.

Sunday nights I dread the most, as I know I have to return to work. I hate my job so much that using the word "hate" doesn't seem like strong enough of a term. I loathe it; I loathe what it has become and the person it has turned me into. I hate that I am constantly on edge and filled with anxiety because of it, I hate that I constantly have to keep my email open somewhere in the event that someone wants to yell at me, and I hate that for the first hour or two I'm home every morning I have to leave my phone's ringer on and within earshot for the same reason -- and if it happens it's generally over something that's not my fault anyway.

Make no mistake, I have received several well-deserved chewings-out in my almost six years working that job...and probably 20-30 over shit that was not my fault or I had nothing at all to do with. I'm averaging two or three a month at this point over simply stupid shit.

In all of the time I've worked there I've gotten maybe ten genuine "thank you" calls, emails, or verbalizations -- most of the time from people not even on my team, for doing the job someone on someone else's team should have done right in the first place but didn't give a shit about. The overnight team, myself included, is sorely overworked and underappreciated most of the time and tends to be the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong in our program. As the manager of that team, that burden/stress falls on me more often than not, and I become the whipping boy for everything our program does wrong -- and again, get very little (or zero) thanks for everything that, because of me, goes right.

And all I want to do is go to work, do my job, and go home peacefully at the scheduled end of my shift.

So yes, I'm depressed. But it's not just work doing it. It's the cold, it's a lack of truly restful sleep, it's the constant boredom and monotony of my life, the gray of winter, my hormones being all out of whack, and the inability for, it seems, much to actually change or get better.

I don't know if any picture has better summed up how I've felt for literal years now.

It would be different if that "gradual change through daily habits" was something that, y'know, happened. I've tried that where I can. It doesn't work. I've been told "if you can't change your situation, change your perspective" so many times that I might punch the next person who says it. Why? Because you can change your perspective all you want, but it doesn't change or fix the problem.

Against my better judgments, as I have a very hard time trusting anyone anymore, I let one of my friends at work know that I'm going through some depression and some other (purposely vague) personal issues right now. This friend has fought mental health issues his entire life, and is someone I reasonably feel that I can trust when it comes to this sort of thing. He gave me a referral to a therapist (his own therapist, actually) as well as to a nurse practitioner who works with said therapist for prescriptions for mental health medications.

Both are in the health insurance network I share with the wife, but going down this road is not cheap -- it's a $60 copay for each therapy visit.

Add to this that I do not want to be on any medications.

I am not anti-med or anything like that, in case you're wondering -- I am simply anti-med for me. I know what those pills do to me. I was on them for a brief time in college. I refuse to be turned into a zombie again, or to lose what small part of my original self that I feel I have left.

I told Daisy we'd table the discussion on therapy unless it gets really bad, as I am not going to quickly deplete our medical coverage FSA over the course of a few months without a damn good reason.

Throughout all of this I'm seeing another coworker go through the same thing, needing to take a leave of absence through FMLA to get treated for her own issues, and I silently wonder how long it will be before my demons overtake me, and/or what I will lose along the way if everything keeps spiraling downward. It's a horrific thought. I'm not suicidal -- far from it, in fact -- I want to see everything actually get better. You could say that means I have hope, I guess. But that doesn't mean I'm not in a dark place, because I am. I just have to fight it every day in order to stay alive and stay prepared. That "fight" is sometimes more exhausting than others.

To those ends, I have done what I can to stave it off; I have, for example, continued to apply for more jobs. While I've been rejected for many of these jobs outright with a terse email, this past week alone I had three different phone interviews and had a follow-up, in-person interview on Thursday morning for one of said jobs. I took Wednesday night in order to be able to rest up and be at my best and brightest for it, instead of just getting off work and being forced to run headlong into an interview when I'm tired and burnt out. This worked out well, even if it meant I sacrificed a night of PTO.

I'm also trying to see the positive things in daily life -- I mean, the Chiefs did win the Super Bowl, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are doing really well in the primaries, and the new Picard series is very interesting so far. Not everything is bad, and I have to teach myself to see silver linings in stuff like that.

But, I mean, there's a lot of bad going on too -- including some deaths.

One of my former bosses, back at WVU, had his wife die suddenly about three weeks ago; we didn't find out about it until the memorial service and the like was announced. My parents went; I did not get details. He has now outlived two wives, with his first having died of cancer close to twenty years ago now. I can't imagine how he feels -- Daisy is my world, and if I were to lose her I would be completely lost in life. It's an unbearable thought.

The second death happened at work the other night.

Well, okay, it didn't happen at work, but we found out about it at work.

One of our evening shift employees took a bunch of time off before the holidays -- and by that I mean "before the holidays began," meaning before Thanksgiving. He was out of office a lot and called in on our voicemail line several times to let us know he wouldn't be in, etc. I didn't think much of it; he didn't report up to me, and his own manager (one of my colleagues) was taking care of the PTO and the like for it. On one of his calls, he'd let us know that he'd been in the hospital but would return to work the following Monday...and he never showed up.

This was early-to-mid December; again, I didn't think much of it as he wasn't one of my own employees, but I did see the dude and work with him every day, so it was at the very least an ancillary cause for concern. Calls from management asking where he was went unreturned, as did (apparently) calls from HR. The holidays came and went, and around the New Year, when nobody had heard from him and he hadn't come back, the company processed his termination in absentia.

Note: this is not out of the ordinary -- I did the same with one of my employees about three months ago when she stopped showing up and did not turn in her requested FMLA paperwork (she was pregnant and had missed a lot of time due to complications), and she'd stopped responding to calls/emails/texts from any and all of us. The company simply processes the term, wipes the records, and moves on -- you'd be surprised how many employees just stop showing up, effectively ghosting the workplace, for one reason or another. It is extremely common, and we (as management) generally have to give them a few weeks of leeway before the company drops the hammer.

Yet, if I didn't show up for a few days without telling anyone, you bet your ass I'd be fired by the end of the week...

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic.

So, said employee was finally termed out around the beginning of the year, and everyone moved on with their lives. I asked his manager, my colleague, if he'd ever heard anything back from him either before or after the term, and the answer was no -- dude had just up and disappeared.

Our response to that was, sort of, "Oh well, can't really understand some people, I guess" and we let it go.

Until one night last week when my colleague got a very disturbing phone call...from said employee's sister...who let him know that our missing-in-action, now-former-employee had been found dead in his apartment that night -- only after they'd forced the landlord to break in to see if he was holed up in there. He was, all right -- and apparently had been in there for, ahem, some time.

"Like, the entire time since we last heard from him?" I asked my colleague, after he got off the phone.

"They don't know yet," he replied. "But by the way it sounded from her, that's possible."

He was termed at least six weeks ago.

I searched my records in my inbox and the last email from him that I'd been personally tagged on was on November 27. That was the night before Thanksgiving. The last we'd personally heard from him via phone, to my knowledge, was about a week and a half or so after that.

He was nine years older than me, and to my knowledge was not married and had no children. And while I write this, his body is about 200 yards from where I'm sitting, at the mortuary/crematorium literally across the street from my house.

Or what's left of his body, anyway. I shudder to think. They've probably processed him by now anyway.

After the call, we let a few coworkers and other management know, mainly because they were all sitting around us in our section of the office when my colleague got the phone call -- but apparently nobody bothered to tell our executive director, who called me at 9am the next morning to ask for any details about it that I had. Over the next few days several more people would reach out to me asking what I knew, as if I was the oracle on the subject -- I, of course, only knew what I'd been told after the call took place, I wasn't actually on the phone of course.

Arrangements are apparently pending, if anything will be done at all. The date of death listed in the obituary in the newspaper was the day he was found. Word spread throughout our program (especially us After Hours folks) over the next few days, but no official announcements were made at the management level, or anything like that. I mean, after all, the guy wasn't a current employee anymore. I wouldn't expect people to make grandiose announcements about my own passing if I kicked the bucket after I no longer worked there.

"Is it possible that he didn't return to work because he was dead?" A friend and former coworker who knew him had asked me.

"I mean, I guess," I replied via text. "I only know what you know at this point."

Apparently the team got some more details on Thursday or Friday about what had happened, but as I don't work those days I haven't yet gotten that information. It is what it is and doesn't change anything; dude is still dead. While some part of me is curious, a larger part of me so doesn't need to know any grisly details about it.

So I continually plod along, waiting for things to change or get better, sleeping when I can and feeling that I'm constantly under stress or pressure during my waking hours. It's a continual cycle.

I probably should talk some about the interview I had on Thursday morning, because it bears discussion. As all of you know, and I've not made it a secret here, I've been trying to move on from my current job for the better part of three years or so at this point. I don't have anything against most of the people I work with -- in fact, it could be said that those people are the primary reason I've stayed in my position as long as I have. Most of them are helpful, thoughtful people who are suffering through the same thing I am for the same reasons I am -- primarily because we get paid decent (not great, but decent) wages for what we do, despite the bullshit and stress involved. No, it's the company I want to leave. It's the overnight shift I want to leave. It's the job itself.

The secondary reason I've stayed at that job for as long as I have should be rather obvious at this point -- it's because no matter how many interviews I give via phone or in person, and no matter how well I believe those interviews go, everyone rejects me. Over the past year I've probably had over twenty phone interviews and at least ten, maybe more, in-person interviews for various positions at various companies. A few of them, at times, admittedly felt touch and go, but most of them went exceedingly well...and I still was not selected.

So I sat down on Thursday morning with the HR representative at a company I interviewed at before about six months ago (for a higher-level position at that time), for an entry-level position that pays as much as my current management position does at my current company, and we had a nice little chat.

While I try to remain optimistic in scenarios like this, I'm not sure I'll get the job this time around either. I've learned not to hold my breath in these situations at this point.

"I've never interviewed for a job I didn't get," I remember one of Daisy's coworkers telling me at the company holiday dinner a few months ago.

That's great, lady, I thought. Check your privilege please. Because for most real people in the real world, this does not happen.

The interview went fine -- at this point I've been through enough of them to where I believe I am good at them, and believe that I can tell employers what they want to hear while still being honest and forthright with them about my thoughts and expectations as well as my experience. However, this means almost nothing when it comes to actually getting hired, I've found.

The interview took about an hour, and when I was done I shook hands with the HR lady and she said she'd be in touch soon -- the next training class starts on March 2, which means in order for everyone they're hiring to be able to give a customary two-weeks' notice to their current jobs (read: something I'd need to do), they have to give the yesses or nos by, well, within the next 48 hours. I brought this up with her, and she was well aware of this fact.

It also means that if I'm offered this position and I accept it, there's none of that customary "downtime" between one job and the next -- I give my notice, I work up until my last day, and then the following Monday I'm in training at the new place. I was hoping that with any position I moved to, I'd be able to pad it out a little and get at least a week or so off in order to somewhat reset my sleeping schedule and to get a little breathing space, but this job won't allow that if I get it.

Best case scenario is that I get a yes within the next 48 hours, I accept, I announce to my leadership that day, and then I announce to my team in a meeting that night. Second-best-case: I do the same but only have enough time to give one week's notice. Worst case is that I don't get an offer and life continues as it has been with nobody having been the wiser.

I have another in-person interview on the books for another job sometime this next week; I'm currently waiting on the HR staff for that job to get back with me to schedule a time and day, after providing them with my available days/hours. I also applied for a third job this morning that I am sure to get an interview for (at least via phone) sometime soon. So I mean, there are options.

Any of these jobs will have to give me a bit of leeway on some time off as a condition of hire; I will be visiting my family back home in West Virginia this fall for about a week or so, and there's also an entire family trip to South Dakota tentatively scheduled for July or August, depending on everyone being able to get their schedules aligned. Both of those trips will require time and money. Plus, I mean, I'd like to get out to Colorado again soon as well. Some companies give more time off than others.

And so life goes on...